What does the message “a piece has failed a hash check” mean and what are hash fails?
BitTorrent clients hash check the piece data they receive and perform integrity checking on it in order to verify that the received piece matches the piece as it was in the torrent uploader’s original file(s). When a piece fails this check it is discarded (without being written to disk in most clients), and then automatically re-downloaded. Occasional hash fails can be ignored as a mild nuisance, while a large number of hash fails on a torrent can indicate a problem. Most clients are setup out-of-the-box to kick&ban peers which repeatedly send them bad data, but if you’re seeing more than a few hash fails on a torrent, you will probably want to ensure that the option is enabled in order to minimize download waste. The option/preference is generally listed as “kick/ban clients that send you bad data” or something similar. Enabling it will prevent peers from sending you an excessive number of corrupted pieces, as your client will automatically block them once they have sent you more than
Related Questions
- What does it mean when the command uberftp or mssftp fails with a Invalid CRL: The available CRL has expired error message?
- When doing a truss on the ns-httpd process, I occasionally see and EAGAIN message. What does this mean?
- What does the message "a piece has failed a hash check" mean and what are hash fails?
